I'll be watching you

I am a people watcher, always have been. Going on vacation just changes where I do the watching. So here are some of the people we saw this week in Cancun.

An Asian woman in her early 30s—she was thin, and wore a two piece suit and sunglasses. She had long hair, nearly to her waist, and had colored it some sort of honey color. Or perhaps the sun had done that, stripped the color from her hair and left it looking a bit wan. She stayed at the beach most of the day, putting her hair up, taking it down, rolling over this way and that. She’d also saved the beach chair next to her for someone who never showed up. I wondered if her companion had just overdone it the day before—either too much booze or sun could do that to you—or if they’d had a fight. The other person never did show up and she finally left.

A family of three—tall father, slightly tall mother, both lean with a born-that-way look. The daughter was either a very tall pre-teen or else a slightly tall young teen. What caught my eye first was the daughter’s braid. She had very long hair and the first time I saw her, she’d braided her hair into a braid almost as thick as my wrist. Her mother had nice hair too but not like the daughter’s. Kent noticed the family dynamics: all three clearly had high regard for each other. As he said, so often you see pre-teens or teens sullenly going along with the family vacation, there because they were forced to be there. But not this family. They sat near us a couple of days, and we saw them when we were having drinks at happy hour and they just seemed to enjoy the heck out of each other.

A gaggle (no other way to describe it) of English women who knew each other, some of them clearly on friendlier terms than others, but all at least good acquaintances. We finally decided they were probably all flight attendants there after a long haul flight. We saw them two days in a row and then poof! They were gone.

Two couples who, I swear, never left the pool—specifically never left the bar at the pool, although they pretty much stayed in the pool. One of the women had three or four random tattoos on her back, as though they’d happened accidentally. The tattoos didn’t have any shared theme that I could tell and at least one was not in color. I wondered what made her get those, what if anything they meant to her. They were so random, in fact, that I wondered if she'd lost a bet. The two guys never, ever left the pool which led me to believe they just peed in it for three straight days.

A couple of senior couples—these were the ones I especially liked to see because I hope Kent and I are like that when we reach that age. They were moving slowly but clearly enjoying the warmth, the view and their time together.